Conversations – ones I’ve had or overheard – have always been a major source of inspiration.
   At times these two overlap and I momentarily join in with people at the bus-stop or, alternatively, I’m involved in a conversation yet feel an outsider.
   More and more I sense myself avoiding direct conflict with views and observations I find totally wrong and that can leave me ashamed.
   Why didn’t I intervene? Why hadn’t I expressed myself forcefully with candour?
   This was the case not long ago on the Cardiff-Merthyr train when a man got on ( in his early thirties) wearing a FREE TOMMY ROBINSON sweat-shirt.
   He was not your typical alt-right character at all, with long hippy-style hair and swotty specs; he looked thin and under-nourished.
   He began an animated conversation with a black fella sitting opposite me ( the neo-fascist was standing by the exit door).
   They appeared to know each other and the black bloke was totally supportive – ‘Yeah, you’re right! Free the man!’ and with no indication of fear.
   I was ‘on pins’, wanting to shout out how wrong, how misguided, how appalling! But remained silent.
   Then the Robinson supporter disappeared from view ( must’ve been squatting on the floor) and I noticed a woman along the carriage staring at him curiously.
   We soon arrived at Ponty and the black guy got off with a ‘See ya!’ as Robinson-man took deliberate steps to the opposite exit and paced emphatically towards the open door, only for it to shut automatically.
   He pressed the OPEN button like a panic one. The Guard was alerted and soon appeared on the platform.
   Robinson-man returned to the closed door opposite, braced himself and counted out purposeful steps, halting at the open door. He took a long, deep breath as if ready to sky-dive, and made it onto the waiting platform and the concerns of the Guard.
   It reminded me of ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time’, when the protagonist was on the London underground.
   I wondered if anything I could have said would’ve mattered.
   Occasionally I overhear things so bizarre I’m unsure if I’ve actually heard them.
   Only the other day a woman was talking about the Holocaust on the bus up the road ( not an everyday topic, but she’d just attended her regular History class). She mentioned Holocaust denial , when a  man who I’d spoken to several times and seemed reasonable simply said – ‘ Yeah, just like that Corbyn!’
   I was incredulous, but couldn’t join in because I was afraid I hadn’t heard it right. Looking back, I believe I did.
   There’s no denying I’m afraid of losing my bap in a social setting, as when I recently talked to the epitome of a ‘plastic’.
   Any football fan will know that term : someone who attends games just for the glory or, even worse, to follow the various, glamorous opposition teams.
   With my beloved Bluebirds back in the Prem the number of such fans has rocketed. I don’t begrudge those who really are City fans, but this…..
   I had known him for years as an avid egg-chaser who’d rarely expressed any interest in the round ball game and last time I’d seen him at our ground was four years back when, you guessed it, we happened to be in the Premiership!
   Now he was explaining – ‘I’ve got a season ticket just for the one season, because next year you’ll be back down. The manager will be sacked by Christmas…..that’s what always happens. You go there whatever, don’t you?’
   I swallowed my tongue, bit my lips, breathed very deeply.
   As someone who has always followed teams passionately and truly believe we should embrace Welsh football at all levels, here was my nemesis.
   If I’d had a few pints though, I doubt I’d been so restrained!
   Talking to blatant racists I can’t keep quiet, as I try to be calm and point out how ludicrous their arguments are.
   One man I meet often on our daily newspaper routes ( a senior citizens' ritual, if ever there was one) started a diatribe against the Nigerian team during the World Cup, calling them ‘lazy’ and implying it was an African characteristic. I simply mentioned Cardiff City's two Africans Bamba and Manga and their prevailing work ethic.
   The following poem’s based on an overheard conversation at the bus-station, yet is fictionalised.
   One aspect I didn’t include was amusing, but didn’t fit in.
   During this incident two paramedic vans were parked along the Avenue de Clichy in Merthyr ( see the photo), near the bridge in question.
   Their Cymraeg side faced us with ‘GIG Cymru’.
   ‘Wha’s goin on b’there?’
   ‘Them vans…..must be water or summin.’
   As we passed in the bus later, the woman changed her mind –
‘ Nah, it’s not water, it’s Welsh, innit?’
 
 
                                     MERTHYR  BRIDGE  INCIDENT
 
‘Seen all tha kerfuffle down by-a bridge?’
 
‘Aye, somebuddy ‘ve sprained theyer ankle
tryin t commit suicide.’
 
‘I yeard a car ad driven off of-a road,
there’s fire-engines an cops galore
an loadsa stewdents watchin
an videoin it all live.’
 
‘ Ey, yers Dave, bet ee knows…
Wha’s appnin on-a bridge?’
 
‘Washed up body mun!
Thought it woz a film set,
tv camras ev’rywhere,
I wuz lookin f Richard Bloody Arrington.
Road cordoned off, could be a murder scene.’
 
‘Well yer's-a bus….
Ey drive, wha’s goin on?’
 
‘Fisherman broke is leg,
takin im up Prince Charles.’
 
‘Truth is always borin Dave.’
 
‘ Aye, but I bet
ee wuz ewsin an arpoon.’ 

   ‘ The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.’
   ‘ ….Celtic nationalism is not the same thing as Anglophobia. Its motive force is a belief in the past and future greatness of the Celtic peoples.’
   ‘ Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence : in other words it is war minus the shooting.’

•    George Orwell, ‘Notes on nationalism’ & ‘The sporting spirit’ ( 1945)

   At Aberystwyth Uni in the 1970s I studied the works of George Orwell under the expert guidance of Ned Thomas, then editor of ‘Planet’ and activist in Cymdeithas yr Iaith.
   I avidly read all his main works  and found ‘1984’ and ‘Animal Farm’ fascinating, his non-fiction books like ‘Homage to Catalonia’ and ‘Road to Wigan Pier’ illuminating, his lesser fiction very uneven yet always interesting and essays pertinent.
   I especially recall his critique of so-called ‘champagne socialists’ whose values and lifestyle were totally mismatched. Applying Buddhism to their beliefs , he argued that their inner and outer lives should be one, they should live by their principles.
    So it was very disconcerting, indeed galling, to read his ‘Notes on nationalism’and other essays published in a single short one pound volume by Penguin (part of a varied and interesting series incidentally).
   On the positive side, his analysis of anti-Semitism in Britain at that time seems relevant to today when applied to Islamophobia, which is by far the most insidious prejudice.
   However, I found the vast majority of his opinions extremely Anglo-centric and limited in empathy.
   To begin with, he redefines ‘nationalism’ on his terms to include any strong belief system prevalent then, such as anti-Semitism and Trotskyism!
   He does acknowledge everybody’s propensity to be bigoted in a some way, but I’m sure my Trotskyist friends wouldn’t appreciate his analysis which views that movement as purely reactive towards Stalinism.
   He constantly uses England and Britain as if they were the same entity, ironically a trait still perpetrated by those unionists on the British left who fail to see how devolution has created a very different scenario.
   Written as the 2nd World War was ending, his views were no doubt highly influenced by his identification of ‘nationalism’ with the most malign forces : Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy and Stalin’s Soviet Union, whose tyrannical excesses provided the inspiration for his greater works.
   What’s interesting  is the legacy of his thinking is stronger than you’d expect as still today many on the British left tend to see nationalism as a single force, failing to distinguish between the conquering, war-mongering kind of the British Empire , against that of small emerging ( or re-emerging)  nations like Catalunya and Scotland, whose right to self-determination they summarily dismiss as divisive.
   Orwell’s narrow-minded appraisal of Celtic nationalism as some kind of monolithic movement is ill-informed.
   He initially refers to its Anglophobia and then goes on to condemn its striving for ‘future greatness’.
   Yet ,even then, the nascent nationalist movements of both Cymru and Scotland were very different from that of southern Ireland, a country where Catholic church and state were becoming indistinguishable.
   In Cymru you had the iconic actions on the Llŷn in 1935 of ‘y tri’, the three nationalists who were imprisoned for setting fire to an RAF bombing school at Penyberth. This was a precursor of the much later Meibion Glyndwr arson campaign against second homes and showed a movement willing to use guerrilla acts against property though not people.
   Nowadays there are definite cultural and linguistic links between all the Celtic nations, but devolution and the beginnings of distinct differences makes any idea of pan-Celtic nationalism even more absurd.
   Anyone visiting Ireland can witness how the Gaelic language has been literally pushed to the brink and edges of coastline, yet is thriving in urban Belfast.
   Yet responsibility for its demise  lies with the government in Dublin, even as the Tories in Westminster refuse to stand up to their allies the DUP and give it equal status in the six counties.
   How can small nations comprehend this ‘future greatness’ Orwell’ writes about? They are more concerned with survival, or  the struggle for national liberation and desire to create and flourish free from the strictures and oppression of overwhelming nation-states.
   In short, how can Cymru reach its potential within a British state where it’s forever seen as an afterthought?
   Orwell was a prophet in the likes of ‘1984’, yet captive of his times in these essays.
   This is equally true of his views on sport in ‘The Sporting Spirit’ where he sees boxing and football in particular as microcosms of nationalist expression, manifestations of militarism.
   The only exception he gives is cricket on the village green, that quintessential English pastime.
   Where his argument collapses completely is his assessment that urban populations seek out the violence of sporting occasions due to their passive  lives.
   The fact that thousands of working-class people followed both football and boxing and yet worked in very physically-demanding jobs escapes him.
   He failed to realise the cathartic nature of sport and also remarkable ability to create heroes from their own class : from foundry to field and mine to ring.
    At present, football and politics are linked more closely than ever and recently friend and comrade Andrew Benjamin started the group ‘Football fans for Independence’, just as several Yes Cymru banners were displayed at Merthyr Town’s ground, together with a Welsh republican flag.
   Rugby – ostensibly our national game – needs to come to terms with this and jettison its establishment image of three royalist feathers, demeaning Principality Stadium and submissive German  motto of ‘Ich Dien’ ( I serve).
   Football – with its anti-monarchist chanting and fierce national identity – has lead the way and proved Orwell wrong.
   In the Euros we were simply delighted to have qualified and to take part, fans mixed freely with others from many countries and there was little animosity. We sang anthems with pride : Y Wal Goch was one of bodies not barriers.
   It was certainly worth reading ‘Notes on nationalism’ just to be aware of how profoundly mistaken a great writer can sometimes be.
​
 
                                    NO FLAGS
 
No flags are large enough
to make a tent
for doorways and parks,
warm enough for a blanket
on freezing nights,
firm enough to keep away
predators on foot.
 
But, could be postage stamps
to put on postcards
to a future
nobody can predict
where poles are scaffold
and cloth stretched taut
across the rooftops.
 
 
We may write
and dispatch them
from the republic of hope,
cowed subjects yet
imagining they fly :
a skein of geese
towards a different country.

   It has been 13 years since I was last in Belfast ( in Gaelic Béal Feirste, sandy ford at river mouth). Even then we were slipping through on route to Rosslare ferry.
   In the 1970s when we lived near Ballymena, we’d visit every weekend for the ‘craic’, not so much the heavily fortified pubs as theatre and music events.
   I imagine there are few places in the whole of Europe which have changed as much as this city, since the Peace Agreement of 1994 led to a power-sharing coalition.
   I vividly recall a city of body-checks, army patrols, vehicles called Saracens, spying helicopter beams and ubiquitous ‘Bomb Sales’ in shops.
    A place where the war was on-going and even the most horrendous acts sometimes went unreported in the media.
   Today the city centre is largely thriving and tourist industry evident. The most prevalent uniforms aren’t khaki but the red of workers touting for bus tours. Hotels are springing up like soldiers once did at your feet on the Falls.
   Holiday Inn and Hampton both face directly onto a large gable-end mural celebrating King William III ( of Orange) who, according to the painting, led some kind of international crusade to the battle of the Boyne in 1690.
   This is a recent one, created at the entrance to loyalist Sandy Row to appease business and tourism, who are still paying for it. It replaced the previous one of three masked gunmen and , on one tourist bus, we’re told it was done for the Queen’s visit…..but I prefer to believe a local as Mrs Windsor would hardly have arrived by bus at Victoria Street!
   It’s hard to think of this city embroiled in a conflict which took so many lives with bombs and bullets and even harder to see it returning.
   Yet……on our first day we visited the splendours of Stormont, a palatial building in wide-ranging estate which has had no Assembly since January 2017 and whose only sign of life is an inquiry into the ‘Cash for ashes’ scandal which implicates the Tories’ ally First Minister Arlene Foster alongside her senior Civil Servants. How can devolution possibly resume till this is finished and that is still way off.
   Stormont resembles some grand colonial residence and the debating chamber something out of St. Fagan’s  folk museum.
   Both the Irish language and single sex marriage are other important issues behind the lack of devolved government and Foster’s DUP are sounding the old Paisleyite war cry of ‘No surrender!’
   Gazing from the window of one tourist bus you see the two giant cranes symbolizing the city’s shipbuilding past, H & W , Harland and Wolf  ; now only about 120 work there.
   One guide quips about the vast Protestant workforce who built the Titanic and equally vast Catholic one who created the iceberg. Another tells us of the Trade Union leader Jim Larkin who returned to the city after being shown short-shrift to lay down Union Jack, Irish tricolour and a loaf of bread, addressing the dockers and asking which the birds took to in their hunger.
   Neither mentioned the fact that - especially in the 1920s after the partition of Ireland  - many Catholics lost their livelihoods when they were forced out of those shipyards, some having burning rivets hurled at them by that exclusively Protestant workforce!
   One thing I noticed were the number of UVF flags displayed on public lamp-posts. The UVF was a loyalist paramilitary organisation responsible for killing many innocents just because of their allegiances. It’s disturbing that Belfast City Council should allow this.
   There are versions of the truth and many tales untold, but from tour guides on the buses you’d swear the  British army had never been here, let alone welcomed initially by the Catholic people till internment without trial destroyed trust utterly.
   The taxi driver who took us on a ‘political’ tour kicked with a different foot ( well, both feet…..if you read the poem below).
   Driving up the loyalist Shankill was intriguing as it was the first time for myself and my wife, who had actually grown up a short distance distance away in the Falls Road.
   Murals lauded loyalist paramilitaries and also one killed by his own for having an affair with the leader’s wife ( no mention of that there though).
   One bizarre plaque and sculpture praised republican Oliver Cromwell who also razed Drogheda to the ground.
   The black cab took us to the International Wall of Justice in the Lower Falls, where  murals expressed solidarity with causes from Catalonia to Palestine. While on the loyalist side we quickly passed by their equivalent showing, amongst other things, the Israeli flag.
   I remembered the 70s when the then legal UDA ( another Protestant paramilitary) was  had close links with both  Israel and apartheid S.Africa.
   Visiting the Lower Falls was a revelation and it’s now designated a Gaeltacht, or Irish-speaking area, with bi-lingual signs, an Irish language centre called Culturlann and a  Bunscoil ( Irish language Primary) where my wife’s old school used to be.
   A living language still not recognised officially.
   In the City Hall exhibition in the city centre – that oul’ tit-for-tat – it soberly explains how there are two other languages apart from English here : Gaelic of the natives and Ulster Scots of the planters.
   I’ve never heard anyone speaking the latter or seen it written down, yet it is recognised by the EU as a minority language thanks to the efforts of the recently-deceased Lord Leith. No wonder Arlene and her acolytes harp on about it every time an Irish Language Act is mooted.
   A number of Protestants in the north have been prominent promoters of Irish and that son of east Belfast Van Morrison embraced Irish culture when he recorded ‘Celtic Heartbeat’ with The Chieftains.
   Nothing is simple as it seems.
   Belfast has the marvellous Titanic experience, famous fried breakfasts including potato and soda bread and a luscious dessert called a pavlova which you could climb and put a flag on top, if you could decide which one.  
   Our taxi driver takes us to the looming Peace Wall between Falls and Shankill, Catholic and Protestant, republican and loyalist, Irish and British ( the Empire knew expertly how to divide and rule).
   He hands us a black marker and says that graffiti’s legal here.
   My younger daughter finds a rare pale patch to write ‘Heddwch’ and notices the same word not far above it.
   Later the driver explains – ‘Our hopes are with the younger generation.’   
 
                                            THE TAXI-DRIVER’S TALE
 
I’ll close the door
so nobody can hear.
They caught what Micky Brady
told those Americans,
went viral on social media.
Micky’s supposed to be sacked….
‘cept he isn’t really ;
he was sounding off
about that rat on the wall.
 
I’ll tell you my own story….
you can’t help
who you fall in love with,
we ended up in Yorkshire,
fell in love with a Protestant girl….
I know it sounds like Shakespeare.
We got run out of the Falls
then south Belfast did the same,
I even changed my name
to Sammy to hide identity.
 
They found out eventually.
The local ‘boys’ came round
‘Sure it’s Pat, he’s a good Catholic!’
Then came the punch-line –
‘We’ll give you one day
before you get the bullet!’
 
Now I’m back I remember
‘whatever you say, say nothing’,
it has to be tit-for-tat,
will you look at this, look at that.
I’m done with running
but have to keep my tone even :
UVF flags still rule the lamp-posts
and Stormont’s a waiting tomb.
​

     Like my son, my younger daughter is a Bluebird.
   I took my son along from the age of 5, but my daughter still hasn't forgiven me for leaving her behind for our trips to Wembley.
   Nevertheless, she's made up for it since and the highlight of her fandom was the same as mine, with promotion to the Premiership last season, so much better in blue and with the club as one.
   Like me she's an obsessive, collecting autographs and photos much like I did with programmes and stickers.
   So it was we turned up for last Saturday's friendly v. Real Betis ( not Real Bettws as wags would have it) at ridiculous o'clock.
   For once I persuaded her to enter via the old Ninian Park gate on Sloper Road just to check on the state of Welsh writer and renowned supporter Dannie Abse's tree ( we planted a few years ago in commemoration).
   The brick-walk had been cleaned and the one my son bought for me bearing the title 'Bluebirds' Poet' was easily found.
   'Do you want a tree when you die dad?' asked my tactful daughter. 'There are plenty of other Mikes here to keep you company!'
   Dannie's laurel was in fine fettle , though the plaque is a bit chipped.
   Outside the ground the first person we encounter is, of course, Dai Hunt : City Legend or Total Pain, depending. The fella who did the team talk at Kevin McNaughton's Testimonial.
   Who climbed a tree next to our training ground, only for players to hurl balls at him.
   Who fell off his moped driving through Swansea and was taken to hospital ; legend having it that he was doing the Ayatollah at the time!
   Who used to yell out to all the players before every game in Ninian as if he knew them personally.
   In all his wisdom, what does Dai say?
   ' We're going down! We'll be be bottom! I've got a bet on it.'
   Lej soon turned Pain and as the players' cars eventually arrived he intercepted them. New signing and keeper Alex Smithies must've been warned as he nearly ran him over.
   My daughter managed to get almost every signature ( only Hoilett slid in unnoticed ) and, as a left-back herself, had photos with our own left-backs union of Bennett and Cunningham.
   Highlight was undoubtedly skipper Sean Morrison, who signed the excellent cartoon of himself you can see above. He was very impressed with it.
   New signing from Brizzle City Bobby Reid looked a 'twt' and it was a shock to see him as the only recognized striker when our team was announced.
   We played with a false number 9 ! Was Warnock trying to out-Spanish a Spanish team?
   We began brilliantly, with Josh Murphy, Hoilett and Reid high-pressing and Murphy scoring with a great finish.
   From 10 minutes into the game till half time they completely dominated possession, with Sol Bamba dropping back from holding midfielder to extra defender and it was no surprise we went in 2-1 down.
   However, the second half could easily have seen us win : two good penalty shouts for pushing ( both ignored ) and two great chances for Murphy and , right at the end, Cunningham.  
   Our shortcomings are obvious and must be addressed by manager Neil Warnock this week : we need a striker and dominant midfielder at the very least.
   Almost every single pundit is saying we'll be relegated, yet we have a lot of attributes this time which we didn't possess last time we went up : togetherness, fitness and, above all, exceptional pace.
   On the positive side, we also tried to play it through midfield far more and Reid was a key in linking defence and attack, although Murphy and Bennett were the outstanding players.
  Passionate, hard-working players like Peltier and Patterson could well struggle in the Prem through lack of technique ; while others like Manga and Ralls may well surprise.
   The examples of Burnley and Bournemouth show it can be done : the former finishing seventh last season without spending a fortune.
   I'd like to bet on Dai Hunt losing his bet.


          WE DON'T STAND A CHANCE!

We don't stand a chance!
Look at all the money
which hasn't been spent
by our billionaire owner
who, last time, lost out.

Look at all those Big Boys
with their Internationals
even on the bench ;
Fulham and Wolves blowing it
like lottery-winners on a night out.

We're doomed from the start....
except, there's little Bobby Reid
with dreadlocks swinging out
and Josh Murphy, the other twin,
like a kid on the Rec.

Thinking of Bournemouth and Burnley
then there's always hope
that Callum will be doing The Floss
and Mozza rising up to score
( well, I had a dream like that).   

 

  I grew up in England from the age of seven. All those who've had a pop at me recently on social media for not supporting their send-them-victorious football's-coming-home (' only joking' according to Lineker!) team, please note.
   My family moved there from Aberystwyth.
   My mum hailed from Gwlad yr haf ( Somerset) but grew up and went to Uni in Aber, where she eventually settled as well.
  She was a weird combo of lefty and bigot : pro-Soviet yet furiously anti-Welsh language; she would've been a member of CND at the same time as campaigning against Welsh language education and dubbing the Urdd the 'Welsh Hitler Youth'!  
   My dad was equally anti-Cymraeg : though a Barri boy through and through , his job with the Ministry of Agriculture involved communicating with a lot of Welsh-speaking farmers and , a monoglot, he couldn't abide by what he saw as their mockery.
  Ironically , both his parents were from Welsh-speaking families, one from Cilfynydd and the other Wenvoe. 
   Just about the only thing they shared ( apart from our council house in Penparcau) was a loathing of Welsh.
   At first I really liked Cambridge simply because I could cycle everywhere, support the team just down the road ( Cambridge City) and, for a while, explore the wildness of an area soon transformed into a new housing estate.
  I disliked the piss-taking of my strong west Walian accent, though never adopted the cockneyfied speech of the city ( I was normally a starling when it came to such matters).
   It now seems strange to imagine my heroes wandering the self-same streets and that I could've passed Syd Barrett on his 'I've gotta bike', or under the window of a college room where Ted Hughes was ravishing Sylvia Plath. On Granchester Meadows we swiped away wasps and my mum talked about one Rupert Brooke, who I mistook for a fictional bear.
   My dad soon lost his safe-as-houses Civil Service job and was delivering booze  for an offie for a while. 
   I recall him almost knocking a policeman flat when driving in the city when he got into one of his notorious explosive tantrums, which could be particularly scary if there were knives around.
   I was such a good singer at 11 that my mother wanted to enrol me for the famous King's College Chapel school ( actually, I knew she just wanted to elope with our lodger, who later became my step-father).
   I played football for the City team and that was the height of my career : a right-footed left-winger long before they became fashionable. 
   In 1966 everyone supported England, even the Welsh boys like myself
( though most only played rugby)and having switched allegiances to Everton ( just because I liked the name), it was more a matter of following the unsung left-back Ray Wilson.
   Until I discovered Dylan Thomas's story 'Peaches' at Grammar and  R.S. Thomas's 'Cynddylan on a tractor' ,I saw my country of birth as a place of holidays : the Knap, the Island and the paddle steamer over to my mother's country.
   However, one school trip was organised to Aber itself , where my grandparents still lived and where we stayed at a Junior School just outside.
   Despite being Grammar boys, we marauded the shops like a pillaging tribe of invaders and when they talked sincerely about locals living in caves I didn't correct them.
   It was only when when my parents separated and my mum and I moved to a small village on the Suffolk border that I discovered the true meaning of community.
   Until I was 16 at least, my friends were working- and middle-class :the sons and daughters of farm workers, factory workers, vicar and shop-keeper and only the posh daughters of the wealthy landowner stayed clear.
   Cymru was confined to that story and poem, to my mother and sister orating Dylan and myself responding with R.S.
   It exposed my mum's contradictions : besotted with Dylan yet hating Cymraeg.
   When my mother eventually did elope with my step-father leaving me virtually homeless, I had no choice. I simply looked up at the noticeboard on the station, saw 'Cardiff' and thought 'Barry'.
    Likewise, Aber was the obvious place to go to study.
    I was ,indeed, going back to the future ( or, more accurately, forward to the past). 
   With my parents, I had learnt to do and think the opposite of their example.
   I hardly conceived of myself as having a 'nationality' or strong identity in those terms then. I had accepted in England that English and British were much the same, yet there were always yearnings, stirrings ( what could be called 'hiraeth') in the spell of those writers' words and in my desire to return.


MY MOTHER TAUGHT ME HOW TO STEAL
 
My mother taught me how to steal ;
our garden path made from bricks
carefully laid towards the tree,
we filched from the builder’s yard,
a dusk raid across a busy road.
Our garden bloomed rare
with exotic plants she’d concealed
furtively from the city’s Botanic Gardens,
her first class Biology degree
useful when it came to Latin names.
 
My own bricks and plants
were books rapidly tucked
into my duffle coat, literature and history,
even a fad for Agatha Christie ;
pens and pencils from Woolies
never believing I’d be caught.
I trod their unsteady ways
in many strange countries,
tended and cultivated characters
who grew within me.
 
My mother taught me how to steal
but not how to give :
I never once handled a present
as I did that high wooden gate
in torchlight, nervous and excited,
outlaws gloved in the dark.
​     

   A few years ago I was staying in Portland, Oregon with Ceri Shaw, who runs the americymru website and was organising readings for three visiting writers, including me. During my spell there he suffered the most dreadful toothache and was trying all manner of remedies as treatment was far too costly.
 I realized just how invaluable our NHS is, even though the reality with devolution is that we now have four different, distinctive health services.
 Of course, dental treatment is often not free here and it remains problematic for many to find a national health dentist. I only stayed with mine when they went private as I'd had horrific experiences elsewhere, including nearly dying in the chair from swallowing Novocaine!
 The great act which Nye Bevan began 70 years ago still has a long way to go. It's very much an unfinished symphony, awaiting a similar composer.
 Like teeth, toes aren't generally covered by the system and when I went to the GP recently(I won't say 'my GP' as I see a different one each time) I was advised to pay to see a Chiropodist.
 Like many others, my own experiences range from positive to extremely negative, yet I can't imagine what it would be like to revert to paying for prescriptions (which do accumulate with age) or the regular eye checks  I attend.
  What was disconcerting recently was that I had to chase up the hospital's Eye Clinic for an appointment, being told several times of a 'serious back-log'.
  I wonder if this is a common problem.
 Too many people I talk to are forced to go private for hip and heart surgery and cataracts.
 This should not happen.
 Consultants should work wholly within the NHS and not compete with the very institution which employs them.
 Nurses trained by the State and paid for with our taxes should not have the option of working in the private sector and the same goes for doctors.
 The manner in which health and social care are gradually being integrated in Scotland under the SNP is exemplary and makes sense both economically and in terms of well-being.
 Patients can be visited or deploy hi-tech machinery at home, therefore releasing hospital beds. More social care for the infirm and elderly gives them increasing independence.
 In Cymru, with our very high levels of obesity, exercise and nutrition in schools are fundamental. We need school allotments and pupils cooking their own dinners ;also sports which are far more inclusive and which emphasize enjoyment over competition.
  I hear you ask , where is the money coming from?
  A great amount can be saved by scrapping educational inspectors and the bullying challenge advisors and replacing them with teacher-advisors on sabbaticals. In health care equally, power and decision-making need to be implemented by practioners.
  Regarding mental health, our children's well-being is not being addressed.   Educational psychologists too often have little contact with the pupils they are asked to assess.
​   Under the Labour/LibDem administration in the Senedd levels of stress on our children have become intolerable, with a system obsessed by testing and exams and failing totally to consider the effects on mental health.
 Doctors, social workers and teachers need to have far more opportunities to work together. The earlier a problem is dealt with the better, yet pupils struggling with anxiety, depression and other mental health problems are brushed aside, with one agency blaming the other.
  Health, social care and education should be a trio : sharing and harmonizing. Too often, only dissonance is heard.
  From my own experience, it's sadly the negative which tends to stick in memory. My Gran was literally incarcerated in a psychiatric ward when she had Alzheimer's.
 Today she'd probably lose all her assets (house and some savings) to keep her in a private home.
 Yet on the positive side, my sister has generally received excellent treatment for her serious epilepsy and on-going psychiatric disorders.
 There's no point glamourising the NHS in Cymru, but we certainly take it for granted.
  Nye's great work of art has some way to go before it's completed.
​  He struggled against the odds to create it, yet we are too busy preserving what we have , to imagine an even better future.


 SAVED

When I came round
didn't know where I was,
thought I was a hospital DJ again
spinning songs all day long.

I had fallen,see,
only had a few this time,
out of the bus
and onto paving stones.
​
I was often doing it
though never like this;
they operated on my head,
saved me, kept me alive.

Those doctors in theatre
had been like directors
and I was the drama;
nurses script-perfect actors.

The play itself changing
from comedy to tragedy,
but with an ending
to please the audience.

They were quietly applauding
my missus and children
and I could see how much
they belonged in the scene. 

This was a work of art,
everyday and extraordinary;
not a brush but a scalpel,
​unsigned, beyond value.

   When I begin to dream in Welsh......
   When words and phrases swirl in my head like those currents the gwylan ( seagull) floats and flies upon.
  I am yn gocls ( drunk) with yr iaith.
   And then....like a penmawr ( hangover) the week after brings a feeling of being bereft, akin to the nation itself in the words of one of Harri Webb's best ever poems ' Colli'r Iaith' ( losing the language).
   It's both privilege and pleasure to attend the Cwrs Haf at the Uni in Trefforest once again and this year's course surpassed all other ones for many reasons.
   I now have more 'hyder' ( confidence) and can chat to both the tutors and fellow course-goers. Being 'rhugl' ( fluent) is only a matter of over the bridge, round the corner, up the mountain......
   Also, the course had far more variety than previously and nearly every day we had one or more visiting speakers, as well as three tutors over the week, each with their own enthusiasms.
   The only baffling aspect of the week was that there were fewer in our class than any of the 9 years I have attended, though the other levels fared much better.
  On the first day local historian Alan Cook told us that Pontypridd was named after  Pont y ty pridd and not a bridge made of mud and how the well-known Turner painting of the stone bridge featured just the one house, as did all paintings of that time.
  It was interesting to find out that Rhydfelen was actually the correct version of Rhydyfelin and that the ford ( rhyd) was almost certainly yellow  because of the iron in the water.
   He spoke a good deal about pilgrimages to Penrhys and I couldn't help wondering what a modern equivalent would be : Dylan Thomas fans to Laugharne maybe?
   We also had a visit from food journalist Lowri Cook ( too many Cooks didn't spoil the cawl!), who explained about the fifth sense of taste or 'umami' , which she defined as the taste of death. Perhaps she had a bad experience in Japan with a blowfish!
   Another day an expert honey-maker showed us how to make our own sgwriad ( hand scrub) using various items. Mine consisted of oats, coco oil, frankincense and lots a other dubious potions. If it were ever to be marketed then the brand name would surely be 'Ych y fi '.
  It was very interesting to revisit the poem 'Glas' by Bryan Martin Davies, especially as I had once written a response to its ending of 'totalitariaeth glo '.
  I'd forgotten just how many times he'd used that colour and others in the poem and how a 'diwrnod glas' is a special day and 'glas' itself can also mean green as in 'glaswellt' ( grass). Though a nostalgic poem, the ending makes you realise just how vital a trip to Swansea was in those days.
   The more you learn the less you seem to know.
   The more you learn, the more you have to un-learn.
   Both were true of the week, as one tutor showed how many Welsh-speakers actually avoided the much-practised versions of 'Yes' and 'No' like Ie/ Nage , Ydw/ Nag ydw ayb.
   Through the week important aspects of Welsh history and culture kept emerging ; the unique nature of cerdd dant (or 'string music', as in the harp) and the way in which poetry and music are inextricably linked. I had never realised before that poets composing their verse were described as 'canu'r gerddi' or singing the poem and looking at the form of englynion with its formally structured musicality, I could understand.
   For a moment I did think we'd have a go at an englyn and I'd have relished the challenge, but others in the group were more musically inclined and when we looked at the work of poet Waldo Williams related to his poem 'Y Tangneddfeddwyr' ( Peacemakers) which is a superb choral work.
   Waldo was certainly a fascinating character : pacifist , Quaker and socialist who went to prison because of his conscientious objection. You could see how his Christian mysticism came from his 'milltir sgwar' ( local area ) of Preseli in Sir Benfro.
   An afternoon's Cwiz Mawr was cut-throat ( without a phone-cheat in sight), but one of the highlights of the week was the visit by my ol' butty Sion Tomos Owen, of Red and republican events and magazines.
   Sion was launching his book of stories about the Rhondda for learners ' Y Fawr a'r Fach' alluding to the two valleys and also to himself today and when young.
  He has become a brilliant presenter on S4C having completed two series of 'Pobol y Rhondda' and also as one of the key presenters on 'Cynefin' , which focuses on various places in Cymru, including Merthyr.
   Sion was on top form with hilarious anecdotes and equally funny readings from the book which - though aimed at lefel Sylfaen ( Foundation) - is eminently suitable for higher levels.
   It's interesting listening to Sion speak and to look at his writing in Welsh ( I was mostly more familar with his work in English). There's a noticeable influence of 'iaith y gogledd' as his mam comes from the north and , quite possibly, many of his former teachers; he uses 'efo' not 'gyda' and 'gen i' rather than 'gyda fi' for instance.
   I find it hard to write in formal language in Welsh, but accents and dialects enthrall me. On the final day we looked at the unique dialect of Caernarfon and how some of the words may well have arrived there from the New York underworld. One of my favourites is 'sglaffio' meaning to gobble up food.
   It would be great to go to the Maes ( square ) in that town on a Saturday night and hear all the 'Cofi' ( as that dialect is called). I might, at last, learn to swear properly in Welsh!
   If there are any learners out there looking for an entertaining and also challenging week's course then I wholeheartedly recommend this one.......every year in June.

        DYSGU  CYMRAEG   

I have come quite a distance, ware teg,
yet my ready answer how long
is inevitably 'amser maith yn ol',
which is easier to say than numbers
when I must use 'y system ugeiniol'.

I am in dosbarth Uwch 4 Plus
which has been invented for us,
not quite ready for 'Hyfedredd'
where there are folk with degrees in Welsh
who've read ' Un Nos Ola Leuad'.

Sometimes I'm full of 'hyder',
some days I feel almost 'rhugl' 
and then get my 'gwaith cartref'
full of green marks and 'gwallau'
( though I do use Welsh in English poems).

I'd like to enter for the 'Gadair'
in the 'Genedlaethol' one year,
but I'm not sure about that spotlight,
sword, dancers and , above all, those outfits :
blame it on that nutter Iolo Morgannwg!

I once had a 'sgrws' with locals
at the Black Boy , Caernarfon over a few pints
and they complimented my fluency 
( I think they'd had one too many,
or maybe they were being polite).

I've come a long way with many others,
we're like a band of aging adventurers
landing on the shores of Yr Wladfa.
History ,culture leading to a Now that matters :
this time, this tense meaning 'amser'.   

              

   I live on Question Street, though I'm a wanderer on Question Island.
   I pick up a pebble and feel the power of the sea and it always calls me.
   But here, in this season, I'm aware of leavings even as the cuckoo calls hope from the distance, unseen.
   Even as I see ring-doves on the rooftops, nuthatches returned to our garden oak seeking grubs.
   This street's a crook, a hook to hang a hill on.
   Sometimes a police helicopter hovers in the night sky with lamp-eye trained on the moors.
   Who is on the run? 
   Will the fox get back to its den?
   Sometimes you look out the window to find everything changed : a flashing light and open midnight door which has remained closed far too long.
   Yet this season has its own music of readiness, of openings as bees are timely in their comings and goings from a gap in the paneling they've made their own.
   Tulips closing with the dark, sleeping through a panic of lights, of a fall, of finality.
   Cats know no boundaries.
   In dreams I wander like one over lines, walls, by streams and nobody shouts at me.
   No leash, but there can be a chase : running against a wind, legs in muddy sand or arms underwater, straining.
   I live on Question Street, but who is asking?
   I pick up that stone and clutch it , so it takes me to another dimension.
   Question Street becomes Question Island again, yet I still don't know where it begins and ends.
   Out into the darkness , carried away by a wave even though the sea is a memory. 

                                QUESTION  STREET

I have lived here long enough
to know this street's the shape
of a question mark.

One by one the lights go out
as houses are vacated.
Soon they'll all be gone.

One night the ambulance arrives,
its doors left open,
couch and tubes waiting.

I look out for familiar lights,
for the insomniac windows,
the moving silhouettes.

See too much darkness,
too many hedges overgrown,
grass weedy and long.

Where do they disappear to?
Moon and stars won't answer,
no notices in the paper.

The street has no full-stop,
it's curved like a hook :
fishing for doubts again. 

  ' I'd be fine leaving the whole thing alone ; the trouble is it won't leave me alone. Last week Harry & Meghan showed up in my kids' book bags - they'd been invited by their schools to celebrate the wedding by wearing red, white and blue or buying cupcakes or both.
   This is propaganda through tasty pastry.' - Gary Younge, Guardian

  I was recently insulted online by a staunch Corbynite identifying me as  a 'Guardian reader'. I am not ashamed to say that I enjoy columnists like Younge (quoted above), Monbiot, Owen Jones ( also a Corbynite, of course) and Aditya Chakrabortty to name just a few.
   Younge's reluctant republican article was in last Saturday's paper and showed how he could be angered by fanatical propaganda in Britain akin to N. Korean levels of brain-washing.
   The Hewitt Bash dominated the media despite massacres in Gaza and the USA and there was a ludicrous presumption that all 'the nation' were enthralled by it.
   There were virtually no alternative viewpoints proffered, and the only dissent I saw came from singer Pauline Black of the band The Selecter, who voiced her antipathy in no uncertain terms.
   Not even Graham Smith of Republic was wheeled out as he usually is, to suggest it's all down to a one-man show!
   To me, the assumption this has anything to do with the history of my nation, Cymru, is an insult.
   The only relevance is to expose divisions in society, as I walked through Cardiff then Newport that day  and saw many people ( mostly quite young) whose only homes were doorways of closed-down shops not mansions or palaces, cast off by a callous system.
   In Newport one doorway consisted entirely of a blue tent and dog's bowl and many sheets of cardboard marked patches ; so many begged for small change.
   It was pertinent that one of the few republican events organised on the day of Hewitt's betrothal should be at Le Pub, a well-known Newport music venue and vegan/ veggie pub.
   This was organised by Patrick Jones, long-time Red Poet, to raise money for local food-banks alongside musicians against homelessness.
   Patrick had been there when Carlo ( Charles Windsor) opened Redhouse in Merthyr, once so important to that great republican Keir Hardie ( our then Labour Council had no sense of the irony!).
   We greeted Carlo with megaphone poems after the police told us ' No swearing, or we'll arrest you!'
   I got away with it by doing 'The Fracking Crown Estate!', but as soon as he saw Carlo, Patrick yelled out 'You fuckin cunt!' He got away with it.
   Day of the wedding I suffered dreadful food poisoning ( maybe a dodgy wrap in the Diff) and a speeding bus almost ran me down.......are there no lengths that Special Branch go to?
   It's revealing to quote Younge again, who explains that a recent poll said 46 % were 'indifferent' to the whole thing, while 29% were 'happy'; suggesting a great deal of the hype was media concocted.
   Patrick's 'Royal Bedding' event was a welcome alternative at a great venue.
   He opened the evening with his band the Quarks, comprising son Ethan on guitar and Dean Meyrick drums : heavy and aggressive music perfectly complementing Jones's forceful, rebellious verse.  
   His next cd should be excellent judging by this set.
   I followed next and nobody danced to my political and dialect poems, though I did a blast on the trusty mouth-harp and someone called out 'Pretty Vacant'.
   ( I couldn't help reflecting on the fact that the Pistols had won Young Businessmen of the Year awards, even as 'God Save the Queen' was so popular). 
   Most of all, I enjoyed reading a poem called 'Ballad of Mahmoud Sarsak' as I'd earlier attended a rally in Cardiff to demonstrate solidarity with  Palestine. The poem shows how an apartheid exists in Israel and I compare the footballer Mahmoud with Bobby Sands, both struggling for political status, both of whom went on hunger strike.
  Next up was singer-songwriter Selena In The Chapel, whose fine voice wove patterns over and around us and served a contrast to Rick Parfitt, once of 60 Foot Dolls and still a legend in the Port.
   Rick wowed the audience just as the Dolls had done in the 1990s.
   Final act was the amazing Rufus Mufasa, based in Ponty but originally from Ammanford, with a rapper buddy.
   What I liked about her music was it's refusal to be classified.....dub-rap-soul- r n b and more......and her voice , so full of emotion.
   These were songs / poems straight from the same streets I'd walked through that day.
   Younge dubbed that wedding ' a cross between Red Nose Day and the Eurovision Song Contest' .
   Patrick's republican alternative raised a fair amount for food-banks and the homeless of Newport, and was an event packed with the power of poetry and song.
   I was delighted to be part of it, even though I nearly had my skull smashed to smithereens afterwards on the pavement.
   As we left I stood next to a bouncer and we heard a resounding crash, frighteningly close! A large pot lay broken, its base like a thick, jagged missile.
   We both looked up at the stories above Le Pub. Darkness and no open windows or sign of life......pretty vacant, in fact.
   It had been a day of dichotomies : of Palestinian flags waving outside Nye Bevan's statue against Union Jack bunting on a few shops and pubs ; of sad and desperate homeless against the opulence and insistent Brutishness of Windsor ; of vacuous pomp against passionate poetry.
   

   ( This is a poem I wrote especially for that event........Diolch i Patrick a phawb eraill!) 


    
Markle’s  Wedding  Dress
 
In amongst the sparkle
And thousands
The diamonds and gloss
Of Meghan Markle’s wedding dress
Are hanging
The plastic shrouds
Of burnt cladding –
Each hole screaming out
For a person lost –
No matter how many layers
She wears to cover it up
Its black mourning
Glowers through –
It weighs her down
As she walks the aisle
A burden she cannot dismiss –
Not all the gold and silver
Can suffocate and smother
Those shapes, lettering
Of terror and distress.  

   

   Every day walking downhill to town I'm accosted by bewildered SatNav followers who can actually see the new mock-castle beyond a fence, but can't find a way in.
   'How do I get to the new Trago Mills?' 
   I'm tempted to misdirect every one of them, with 'Left, left , left and left again.....till you end up where you began!'
   In other words , keep heading leftwards till you're in welshsocialistrepublicananarchosyndicalist territory....the only way to react to a UKIP-owned megastore dominating Merthyr, just as Crawshay's Cyfarthfa did in the heyday of iron and exploitation.
   It's been over a decade coming and is probably the final knockout blow in terms of the survival of the town centre which - apart from market day - is devoid of life.
   The Redhouse cafe is regularly shut, so you can't get to stare at those Tin Tin cartoons of Labour politicians nobody's heard of.
   Only recently Burton's clothes shop closed down on the corner of John Street, which contains the last Bracchi, Viazzani's ; a shop which is part of Merthyr legend.
   'Burton's Corner' was the supposed meeting-place if you wanted a prostitute and, when I was teaching, a few cheeky pupils would say - 'Sir, I seen yew on Burton's Corner las night!'
   I never did see dubious women there, but it was the regular patch of one 'Billy Sticks', an emaciated seller of the South Wales Echo, with grubby mac and limbs like......well, 'sticks'.
   Grahame Davies - a fine writer who unfortunately works as a lackey for Carlo - tells of rescuing Sticks once from assailants and getting set upon himself for doing so.
   Sticks was there of an evening selling the Echo from a doorway and the Pink on Saturday , which I always bought after a Cardiff game.
   'Echo! Echo!' he'd echo. Or sometimes just 'Co!'
   Eventually his career ended when he went to court accused of masturbating in public, looking at himself in Burton's window as chapel-goers were passing.
   He got a 'conditional discharge'! You couldn't make it up!
   Actually, I might have more in common  with him than I thought, as Peter Finch referred to my 'political flash' in a recent review in 'Planet' of Prof Tony Curtis' Selected.
   Now I imagine myself as a political flasher complete with dirty mac revealing a red flag instead of a plonker!
   The characters, like the shops, have disappeared.
   On the bus home the old folks bemoan a centre they recall as bustling not so long ago.
   It all seems hopeless, yet the Portuguese manage to sustain two cafes, a shop and a pub along the stretch of High Street : custard tarts and espressos to get you buzzing.
   On the plus side, the caffi at Canolfan Soar will soon be reopening under the stewardship of the inimitable Jamie Bevan, returning from his Sully sojourn.
  I look forward to the 'coffi go iawn' and 'pice ar y maen' straight from the bake-stone. Everything will be totally Welsh, with coffee beans from the tropics of Bedlinog.
   I once wrote a haiku for the Canolfan and, amazingly, it's still hanging as you enter -
                  Nawr, mae'r Canolfan
                  yn tyfu fel y dderwen :
                  pobl yw'r mesen.
   It's good to see somewhere flourishing.
   As to the town centre, what can be done?
   I do have a wish-list, but know it's pure fantasy -
       * small bookshop focusing on local writers with a cafe for events
       * proper bakery where you can get fresh bread and scones etc ( think of those in small towns in Ireland)
     *  vegan/ veggie deli like the one in Pontardawe ( smaller town than Merthyr) with lots of tasty pies and pasties
       *   pop-up craft/art shop featuring local photographers , artists and craftspeople
       * craft and real ale shop with all the best Welsh beers and ciders....not to mention whisky
       * a tidy restaurant , not too fancy, but concentrating on tasty, nutritious fare : soups, salads and the like
       * tourist advice centre ( there used to be one), directing people to the many wonders of the area and selling the local walking and mini-bus tours which our imaginative Council will no doubt create.
       If all this sounds very Pontcanna, just remember that Canton has many of these features and I believe there are enough people in the borough who would support them and also we could attract far more tourists if there were thematic tours relating to our vital contributions such as boxing, literature, historians and the FWA parading with wooden guns.
   Festivals and one-off events aren't enough and the town will be duly ignored by all the Trago-seekers who snarl up the traffic every weekend.
   Kipper Towers looks like a travesty on the skyline, designed by a 5 year-old playing with his new Lego set.
   I really hope our town centre fights back. ' Bara a chaws!' proclaimed the protesters of 1831.......not just the basics, but so much more. 


Ewge shop
 
They built this ewge shop outside town,
it looks like a cardboard castle
made by a kid in an afternoon.
 
My mate tol me the owner’s racist
an they always support-a Kippers –
but if they offered me a chance….
 
We ewsed t make things yer,                     
people ave soon forgot –
clothes, toys, bulbs an washin-machines.
 
My dad worked down Oover’s,
woz totelee gutted when it closed down –
ee lost it, lost all purpose.
 
I get sent all over f jobs,
anythin t cover up the statistics -  
slave labour even in-a charitee shops.
 
My mam keeps askin agen an agen
‘Wha yew doin now, son?’
Maybe I’ll be gatekeeper in tha fortress,
 
stridin them turrets with keys in and,
watchin out f’r-a bard boyz –
or maybe I’ll join em.